Many families and cultures have their own Sunday dinner traditions. For me, it’s either Sunday dim sum or pho, eaten in the early afternoon and leaving you stuffed the rest of the day. Then 8:00 rolls around, I’m sort-of hungry, and I haven’t touched a vegetable all day. On those evenings, I like to whip up something quick, light and green. Dinner salads, fruit & cheese plate, and bruschetta are popular choices.

Last Sunday, we had giant bowls of pho at my mom’s house around 3:00. Later on, I started to get hungry during our long drive home so we stopped at the grocery store because I knew the fridge was empty. I’m usually really lost unless I have a recipe on me, but I managed to pick up some ingredients for a tomato salad. Instead of the usual bruschetta, I got home and decided to try it as panzanella.

I knew what panzanella was, but the thought of soggy bread seemed strange to me. But lo and behold, it was actually really good! I made my own recipe, but it was really similar to this one. Also, I only had fresh bread, not stale, so I “express stale’d” it. Cut the bread into cubes, put it in the microwave for a minute, stir, microwave another minute and let it cool. Instant stale. There are other panzanella recipes where you actually dunk the bread into a bowl of water, squeeze the water out, and crumble the mushy bits over the salad – now that just icks me out.

It was yummy, fresh, and the soggy bread wasn’t as scary as I thought. I even had the leftover for lunch the next day and the bread wasn’t much soggier than it was the night before, which surprised me.

The new half-season of No Reservations starts tonight, and I don’t have a TV to watch it 😦 I wonder if they’ll put it on Hulu. Tony kicks it the season by going to Chile.

Latin food is my new obsession, and I’ve already used past episodes to guide my food journey. My first intro to the world of rice and beans was Puerto Rican food, which I ate a lot I was working in non-profit in a PR community. Then I moved to Providence and craved it all year long. I finally started branching out and trying other types of latin food that Rhode Island had to offer and wasn’t disappointed. I ate Peruvian for the first time two weeks ago (wasn’t too excited by it), and the other day I had Salvadoran tamales, another thing I missed from my non-profit days. Anyway, my motto “WWABE – What Would Anthony Bourdain Eat” hasn’t failed me in picking adventurous things to eat.

Unfortunately, the new San Francisco episode airs the day after I get back from San Fran.

I like to do weird things. Check out this absolutely insane-sounding dinner/performance that I’m going to this weekend:

You are cordially invited to celebrate the passé-ist glory of Futurist degustation: a tactile seven-course meal of gastronomic revolution. Those without suitable tactilist garb will be loaned one upon entry.

That didn’t quite give me enough information, so I looked into what the heck tactile dinner parties were like. They’re based on The Futuristic Cookbook, written in 1931, by F.T. Marinetti. Here’s an exerpt from the book’s instructions for a tactile dinner party:

Polyrhythmic salad: the waiters approach the tables carrying for each guest a box with a crank on the left side and a china bowl. In the bowl, undressed lettuce leaves, dates, and grapes. Without the help of cutler, each diner uses his right hand to feed himself from the bowl while he turns the crank with his left. The box thus emits musical rhythms: and the waiters dance slowly with grand geometrical gestures in front of the table until the food has been eaten.

I’ve only been able to read articles written about the book, but it’s amazing how similar the food sounds to what I would consider today’s futuristic and modernist foods (French Laundry and Alinea most obvs). And it was written in 1932! Futuristic then, still futuristic 70+ years later.

Anyway, I’m excited to be witness to this crazyness and I even convinced two of my classmates to go with me. I’m not sure how much they’ll be into it, but they’re generally adventurous and it’ll make a good story to tell our friends back at Brown.